Sunday, April 19, 2009

Brian Viloria has certainly found the fire back. He knocked Ulysses Solis in the 11th round. Those lunging overhand right after a stiff left jab was the killer. It was there all morning, complemented by a nice left uppercut.

Solis came well prepared, wit his stiff jabs, and a right uppercut counters as Viloria came that found their mark, most often below that belt. Solis also tried to end the brawl with body shots, in an effort to weaken and finish off Viloria especially in the 7th round.

But Brian’s right straight kept on landing on Solis chin, followed by an uppercut as Solis tries to clinch. Solis seems to have abandon defense, sensing he was the more powerful guy. It was only a matter of time before one of them falls.

By the 8th round, Solis was trying to press the action with body shots and right straights, while Viloria simply trying to counter with left cross and right straights, his bread and butter punch. Before the round ended, however, two left jabs hit, Solis mid-section, momentarily stunning him. Solis is weak at the midsection? Still it was a Solis round when he almost decked Brian down with a right to the head as the round came to an end.

By round nine, Brian’s straight right kept on connecting to Solis chin, followed by left cross to the head. Solis practically had no defense against it. One wonders why Solis was still standing. He tried to press the action but it was obvious he was on panic mode. He needed to score a KO before the other guy did. By round 10, Solis accelerated his aggression with most of his punches landing on the shoulders, sides, and gloves of Brian. He probably felt he needed a knock out to win.

By 11th round, Brian kept on throwing his right straights off a left jab and Solis caught them all on his chin. But Solis was the champion, a proud one, and the only thing he knew about winning was by coming forward. He lunged off a feint by Brian hoping to land his Sunday best, only to run smack into a killer right straight from Hell. He slumped like a sack of potatoes, his head hitting the canvas, staying there way beyond the count.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

A friend one time asked me for book titled “Why men love bitches.” I was shocked to learn the title was not available in all the bookstores I called.

“It’s selling like hotcakes,” a Powerbooks staff told me.

“You mean all the girls these days want to be bitches?”

It’s probably a zeitgeist, the spirit of the age. About a decade or two ago, girls in my circles were crazy about the works of Antonio Gramsci, Franz Fanon, Karl Marx and other “socially relevant” writers. They wanted to reengineer society. Now, many simply want to be “bitches,” to be winners in life, be it in the realm of relationships, business, or career.

Times have changed. Apparently, Francis Fukuyama didn’t call the collapse of Berlin Wall “the end of history” for nothing.

But come to think of it, zeitgeist actually shapes our reading habits—or at least, my reading habits. Not the other way around.

Recently, I found myself reading books about snipers (War of the Rats; One Shot, One Kill, Sniper One, Point of Impact). I seemed to have lost interest in political economy, international trade, or globalization. Maybe it’s because all these books are proving to be inadequate to explain the global financial and economic mess were are in. Remember Alan Greenspan’s “The Age of Turbulence”? Or Thomas Friedman’s “The World Is Flat?” I use to read these types of books. Since September 2008, however, they all started to look like the works of charlatans.

In these times of uncertainty, however, books on snipers are getting to be interesting. In the world of a sniper, a problem is analyzed through a 12-power scope and solved with a well-placed shot. The world is simple: you are either on the right side the barrel, or the wrong side.